The King Khan and BBQ Show, Those Darlins
November 18th at the Independent, San Francisco

Sure, it’s kind of a schtick. But when the King Khan and BBQ Show take the stage, King Khan scantily clad in a loin cloth and skimpy, shimmering top, BBQ in a hot pink turban, it’s not like you don’t know that they’re partially there to shock. Appearances aside, they put on one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen in a while; what sounds like a band of five (or more!) is actually only two dudes.

All I knew about King Khan was that he puts on an eccentric live show. The Shrines, his last touring ensemble, was a large group replete with horns and stage theatrics, quite unlike the minimalist garage-y punk rock that the BBQ show was all about. I was sorta standing in the front/middle of the room, but I’m pretty short so I couldn’t really see what was going on up on stage. I could only see King Khan; he’s a pretty tall guy. I could tell there was a drummer sitting to his right, mostly because when I stood on my tiptoes I could see his turban. But I couldn’t tell where all the noise was coming from. Where was the tambourine? The drummer/multi-instrumentalist, BBQ (aka Mark Sultan), was playing the drums, and the tambourine, with his feet. And he was playing guitar, and singing too! Talk about a one-man show. Before too long his turban came off, a victim of the performance, and next thing I knew he was sporting a checkered cabbie cap. The set began with fuzzy, reverb-y garage rock and at times got pretty psychedelic, an onslaught of sound tinged by hypnotic fuzzy, guitar riffs. But it was mostly a punk rock, doo-wop inspired act. How about that for something different?

Those Darlins, who I just wrote about a month or so ago, opened the show, and in their usual fashion, got the crowd all sorts of riled up with their awesome country-punk. Kelley Darlin ended the set by smoking a joint up on stage and spitting beer (or was it whisky? I couldn’t tell) into a guy in front’s mouth. Anyway, they got the crowd so pumped that the mosh pit that ensued for King Khan came about most naturally. There was no stopping it. At one point, a girl pulled herself up on stage until she got danced off by Khan, so she flung herself into the crowd as a stage diver and got some crowd surfing in. They couldn’t, of course, resist taking jabs at their recent (as in last week) run-in with the law in Kentucky over possession of mushrooms, and did a pretty great impromptu tribute to what went down, giving us a virtual spoken word performance of the account, claiming that some people just get “too mustache on you!” to deafening jeers and whistles. As rowdy as the show was, it was most certainly doo-wop influenced, with I dare say beautiful homage to 1950s-era early rock ‘n’ rock on a bunch of numbers towards the end. With Khan “doo wop”ing in a throaty baritone and BBQ nailing vocals reminiscent of Ritchie Valens (dude’s got a voice), we were all brought back in time to the days of hot rods and Formica-topped diners. Nostalgic as the set may have ended, this was still the best of rock ‘n’ roll circa 2009 all the way.

Watch: The King Khan and BBQ Show, “Love You So” [at youtube.com]

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